Our wondrous Query Harvester can extract the data you need from Trove’s newspaper holdings to track trends in detail. But before embarking on a major mining exercise it is sometimes useful to survey the terrain. QueryPic creates a quick snapshot of your search query, displaying the total number of articles your query matches over a span of years.

QueryPic comes in two varieties. The classic QueryPic gives you full control, but demands a certain familiarity with devices such as the command-line. It is provided as a Python script to be downloaded and run upon your own machine.

If your needs are simple and your patience is thin then you might prefer the speed and excitement of our latest QueryPic in-browser engine. No downloads! No terminals! Just go to QueryPic enter a word or phrase and… whoosh!

As an extra added bonus, the web incarnation of QueryPic includes access to the the wondrous collection of New Zealand newspaper made available through Papers Past.

QueryPic web is able to accomplish this magic by utilising the APIs generously provided by DigitalNZ and Trove.

Both varieties of QueryPic present the results of your query in graphical form. Additional queries are easily added to existing graphs for the purposes of detailed comparison. But what, you may wonder, lies beneath these peaks and troughs — investigate further by simply clicking on a point to reveal the first twenty matching results. More than just a fetching illustration, this is a tool for determined inquiry!

QueryPic classic

The long-awaited Application Programming Interface (API) to Trove is now available. Huzzah! The frustrations of broken screen-scrapers will soon be a thing of the past.

But this glorious new future will not come without cost. WraggeLabs will henceforth be embarking on a process of code consolidation and renewal as we overhaul all our Trove products to take advantage of this machine-readable goodness.

The first fruits of this process can be enjoyed in the new fully-web-driven version of QueryPic. Instant graphs! No downloads!

More such wonders are to come, but bear with us dear client, as it make take some weeks or months to fully update our wares. In the meantime, it is unlikely that any development of pre-API versions will be undertaken.

We should also announce the imminent retirement of our Unofficial API. It has served us well, but it’s time has now come. Farewell, old friend.

Once again a minor change to the Trove newspapers code (from <i> and <b> to <em> and <strong>) broke my scraper and the tools that depend on it. Fortunately @erochest was quickly on the job and has submitted a fix. If you’re having problems, please update scrape.py from the repository.